Tea Time and Reminiscing
by MARSHMELLOWTOASTIE
Summary: Now 30 years old, Leonardo is still a hero hidden from society. He saves a damsel in distress and thinks back on his teen years. Contains spoilers for the first three seasons of the 2012 cartoon.


Disclaimer- I don't own the TMNT. They are owned by Nickelodeon. I didn't create them. They were created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. I don't make any money from this fan fiction and I never will. This is for entertainment purposes only.

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Leo hadn't been able to sleep, so he'd decided to go out for a roof top run by himself. It would be sunrise soon and the threat of being seen by humans would force him back to his home in the sewers. He still didn't want to go to bed though, his mind refused to shut off. At least when he was out of the lair, he wasn't focusing on not being able to sleep. He knew if he wasn't home before sunrise though the others would worry. Well Master Splinter and Mikey would worry. Raph would start an argument about, "How come the fearless leader gets to stay out after sunrise and I can't?" Donnie; he would still be asleep at his desk, head down on his keyboard long after Leo got home.

He was only a few blocks from the manhole that would take him back to the lair when he heard a woman's scream. She sounded like your typical damsel in distress. Leo followed the sound, happy for the distraction from his thoughts and the excuse not to head home just yet.

Crouching on the edge of a fire escape, Leo looked down into the alley where he saw a young woman surrounded by three Purple Dragons. Leo chuckled at the thought of being able to dish out some hurt to these low lives. The Purple dragons weren't the gang they used to be. After the death of The Shredder five years ago; with no heir to the throne and all of the mutants leaving the clan since there was no one keeping them there, the Foot Clan had all but disappeared. This had given the turtles more time to focus on gangs like the Purple Dragons. At this point the gang was really "hurtin' for dudes," as Mikey put it. Leo wouldn't even break a sweat, because while the gangs had weakened over the years, he had only grown stronger.

The turtles had thought that they'd finished up growing by the time they were in there late teens. As it turned out, they were wrong. They all had growth spurts not long before turning twenty. First their shells started growing. The extra weight threw them off balance and until they had adjusted to the change in weight on their backs they had a few embarrassing slip ups during their fights. Soon the rest of their bodies started growing too and fast; leaving them tall, lanky and tripping over their own feet. Of them all Raphael had it the worst. Going from being one of the shortest turtles, he was soon the same height as Donatello.

Some thugs laughed at Raphael's awkwardness once. Emphasis on the word once. He'd tripped over the unconscious woman that they were trying to save and fell straight back onto his shell. By then the crooks of New York City should have known better than to tick Raph off, but these guys couldn't resist making a crack about a turtle stuck on its back. Embarrassment fuelled Raph's rage and his brothers just sat back and watched the show as Raph single handedly took down an alley full of thugs.

Casey and April had also laughed at how lanky and clumsy the turtles were. Raph would never hit April but when no one was watching he would give Casey a smack over the head. The laughing soon stopped though. With their daily training and work outs, they soon filled out so that their muscle was proportionate to their new size; which was intimidating enough to scare off most criminals before the fighting even began.

They didn't look like teenagers any more, they were grown men. Even little Mikey who had been less than five foot when they'd first gone to the surface was now nearly six feet tall. Donnie was the tallest, nearing seven foot. Raph wasn't much shorter than him but being of a stockier build and having a larger shell he easily outweighed and out muscled all of his brothers. Leonardo was shorter than Raphael by a few inches. That was the first time in their lives that Raphael had been taller than Leonardo. Even when he was a teenager, Leonardo knew that he shouldn't feel competitive over something like height, but he was the eldest, he should've be taller than Raphael. Sure Donnie had always been taller than him, but Donnie wasn't a gloating meat head.

Leo chuckled at the memory.

"What I'd give to be a teenager again."

Leonardo jumped down into the alley between the gangsters and their victim. The older gangster, who Leo recognised because of having beaten him before, took off running the first chance he got. The other two couldn't have been more than 15 years old. New recruits, judging by how young they were, the stereotypical torments they threw his way that the more wizened PDs had stopped using years ago and the way they brandished their weapons with more malice and bravado than was necessary, like they had something to prove.

"Okay kids, just put down the weapons and no one has to get hurt," Leo warned, wondering why he bothered when he already knew how they were going to respond

"Nuh uh. I'm gonna break your shell open freak," the boy holding a metal pipe sneered.

"The Purple Dragons don't take no orders from no green freak," the one with the baseball bat added in, gaining confidence after his friends comment.

Leo sighed. He didn't like fighting kids. He remembered when he and his brothers were teenagers. They thought they were invincible, just like these kids here. It was time and hard lessons learned that taught them that they weren't. Lessons these kids would have to learn too and it looked like he would be their teacher.

He crouched into a fighting stance, not bothering to draw his weapons. The two teens ran at him yelling what Leo assumed was supposed to be an intimidating battle cry. The fight lasted all of three seconds. Leo sighed again, he seemed to be doing that a lot lately, looking at the two unconscious Purple Dragons on the ground and watched as their weapons rolled out of their hands to stop in front of his feet.

15 years he'd been doing this and to be honest it was getting jading. Not that he'd ever give it up. The people of this city needed him. Even if they didn't always show their appreciation when he did save them. It was never easy to have the person you'd just saved from being mugged or raped scream in your face instead of thanking you. Which reminded him, he would have to face the damsel in distress now.

He turned slowly so as not to startle the woman too much. To his surprise she didn't cower in fear at his appearance nor did she run out of the alley screaming that a monster was going to eat her. Instead, she picked herself up off the ground, studying him intently. Not the way a scientist would study a freak lying on a dissection table. More like someone who was trying to figure out where she'd seen this person before. The more he looked at her, the more familiar she seemed to him too; in fact he was sure he'd seen her before. The dark blonde, shoulder length hair and wide, blue eyes seemed very familiar.

"Mr. Turtle?" she asked uncertainly.

It was her, the little girl who'd forced him to have a tea party with her. Except she wasn't a little girl any more. She would've been in her early twenties by now and had grown into a beautiful young woman.

The recognition on Leonardo's face confirmed she was right, "Thank you for saving me Mr Turtle."

Leo was taken aback. A successful rescue and a thank you all in one night. He stuttered over his words briefly before he could respond, "You're welcome... I never did catch your name the last time we met."

"It's Chloe. Would you care to have tea with me Mr Turtle?"

Leo hesitated, "I'm not sure that's such a good idea. I'm not really supposed to let people know I exist."

"I'll scream if you go Mr. Turtle." She smirked at him and he couldn't help but smile back, remembering the exact threat she'd used to get him to play tea time with her back when she was a little kid.

Fifteen minutes later Leo was in Chloe's apartment, sitting with her around the small dining table, a china tea set sitting between them. Pinky out, he took a sip of his tea, listening as Chloe told the tales of what'd happened to her since the day they met. As it turned out, her life had been almost as weird as his. He was shocked at the amount of times their lives had crossed paths without him even knowing it.

"Really? You got kidnapped by The Rat King? How didn't I see you during the fight?"

"I didn't see you then either, but I saw another turtle with an orange mask throw a pink cat at the creepy evil guy. I assumed he was with you."

"Yeah that was Mikey and Ice-cream Kitty."

"Ice-cream Kitty?" She questioned.

"Long story," He shook his head dismissing the topic but smiled at the fond memories he had of the ice-cream cat and the joy it had brought, especially to Mikey.

"Okay, don't ask any questions about the pink cat. Got it. You don't have to worry about me telling anybody about you. I can understand why you prefer to keep hidden."

"Thank you Chloe."

"I did tell people when I was a child but they didn't believe me. Just like they didn't believe me about the pizza faced zombies."

"Huh? Pizza zombies?" Leo nearly choked on his tea. He remembered mocking Mikey when he'd told him about zombies with pizza faces. No way could she be talking about the same thing.

"Yeah, well my Dad told me it was just a bad dream but it seemed so real. Me and all these people were at Antonio's. We all had talking pizza's on our faces and I was attacking your brother with the orange mask. I can't remember why, but I had no control of what I was doing. Then I just woke up in bed at home. Did Mikey ever mention that happening? It was real right?"

"Well he did wake us up one night years ago saying he'd been attacked by pizza zombies. I didn't believe him then. I just told him it was a bad dream. I might have to speak to him about that again." They looked at each other with a look that said, 'okay this is getting weird now.'

"Maybe I don't want to know. Its probably better if it was just a dream."

"Agreed. Pizza zombies is another topic we wont discuss," Leo decided.

"And we wont even mention the Kraang."

"If I never see one of those squishy brains again it'll be too soon. They've put us both through a lot."

Some of the things that Chloe had been through in her life were unbelievable. Which is probably why no one ever believed her. While he and his brother's were resting at April's farm house in North Hampton, she'd spent months stuck in the city, hiding from the Kraang with a pizza delivery guy she didn't even know after her Dad had been mutated and kidnapped.

Leo saw her try to cover a yawn as he drained the rest of his tea, pinky out like she'd taught him all those years ago. Outside the window, the sun was just starting to rise. He'd have to get going before it got too light and he could tell that she was tired. It was time for him to leave.

"Thank you for the tea Chloe," Leo stood up and thanked her with a small bow. "It was nice talking with you but I need to head home now."

"It's the least I could do to thank you after you saved me." Chloe followed Leo over to the window as he climbed out onto the fire escape. "You will come back soon wont you Leo? I've really enjoyed your company." She meant it too. She wasn't just trying to be polite.

"Next time I'll bring the tea." He smiled at her as he jumped to the roof top and out of sight.

The significance of his parting words were not lost on Chloe. The last time he'd said that, he'd never intended to see her again. It was only by chance that they'd run into each other that morning. Chloe knew her chances of ever seeing him again were almost zero. She understood why he kept away from humans and why he wasn't likely to ever return for tea. She hoped he would though. Just like she had hoped fifteen years ago, when she was an eight year old girl playing tea time with a turtle and a canister of glowing goo that she thought was green tea.

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Thank you for reading. Reviews are greatly appreciated.

Please let me know what you thought of this chapter. Tell me if you liked it or disliked it and why as well so that I can improve. And if you see any errors please let me know.


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